Rock Band gameplay video released, taken down, re-released, and debunked

A leaked video of an early version of Rock Band shows a very goofy looking …

While Guitar Hero has been quite the hit for everyone involved, EA is upping the ante with Rock Band—a game featuring not only guitars and bass, but also drums and vocals. Some are excited, some are skeptical, and some are just wondering how all that is going to work on screen. GameSpot released a video of Rock Band in action, but it was quickly taken down. Luckily YouTube proves that it's worth something more than just showing us people getting hit in the junk: the Rock Band clip was quickly uploaded.

The video shows some people "rocking out" in an incredibly embarrassing way to Guns and F'n Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle," and shows that it is possible to fit the information for all the different instruments on one screen. The drums also look great in practice. Harmonix has responded to the video though, and it seems like this footage was never meant to get out.

The video of a trailer you may have seen on various sites was taken from a conference where attendees are generally encouraged to be casual and show off the new stuff they are working on privately. Apparently an attendee videotaped the talk. The trailer was made from an old build of the game quite some time ago for internal purposes- basically to get people working on the game excited. The song was one we have considered for the game but haven't locked down, and you may have noticed that the trailer footage was made so long ago that the people in the video are playing old instruments and prototypes. I guess what I am saying is- this isn't official and doesn't really reflect the final game at all. We'll be releasing a lot of info next week from much newer builds of the game with finalized songs.

So the video we've seen was more of a proof of concept than anything else, and we can't count on that song being in the final game. Bummer. Even though this is an early build that people were playing with the 360 Guitar Hero guitars, it's enough to get me excited about the final game. It does seem like having an entire "band" playing the song could be very fun.

This is one of the games we're scheduled to see next week at E3, so you'll hear a lot more in the coming days.